Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Angalifu was 44
when he died of old age recently, at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, Calif. It made news,
for he was a northern white rhinoceros, a species on the brink of extinction.
Following his death, there are just five northern white rhinos left worldwide,
all in captivity. Away in Kenya, rangers
are risking their lives to keep a 43 year old rhino safe ...... why 24 hours
armed guards for a rhino devoid of even horns ~and how Sudan is the last hope
!!

The northern white rhinoceros
(Ceratotherium simum cottoni), is one of the two subspecies of
the white rhinoceros. Formerly found in several countries in East and Central
Africa south of the Sahara, it is considered critically endangered or Extinct
in the Wild. This subspecies is a grazer in grasslands and savanna
woodlands. After 2000, six northern
white rhinoceros had lived in the Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic but
four of them (which were also the only reproductive animals of this subspecies)
were transported to Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, Africa, in 2009, where
scientists hoped they would successfully breed and save this subspecies from
extinction.

This is what extinction looks like. No meteor from
outer space, no unstoppable pandemic, no heroic, ultimately futile, last stand.
Instead, poor sperm, weak knees and ovarian cysts mark the end of a lifeline
cut short by human greed, ignorance and indifference. With less than a handful left on earth, the
animal’s end is inevitable. Scientists and conservationists hope that
advancements in genetics and in vitro fertilisation might allow for its test
tube resurrection in the future, but before that the northern whites will die,
one by one, over the next few years.

The last living male, named Sudan, lives on a reserve of
savannah and woodlands in central Kenya, with two of the remaining females. The
other two females live alone in zoos in the Czech Republic and the US. Two
males — Angalifu and Suni — died last year.
At 43, Sudan is elderly by rhino standards and vets say his sperm is of
low quality. The Ol Pejeta, Kenya, rhinos
were shipped from Dvur Kralove in 2009 in the hope that the natural environment
would encourage breeding. That hope has faded.

The demise of this species, is an indictment of
what the human race is doing to planet earth and it’s not just happening to
rhinos. Scientists call the mass wiping
out of species by humans the "sixth great extinction" — the fifth
being the one that killed off the dinosaurs 65-million years ago. The northern
white rhino’s extinction is unusual only because it is such a large,
recognisable animal. Modern rhinos have
plodded the earth for 26-million years. As recently as the mid-19th century
there were more than a million in Africa. The last northern whites disappeared
from the wild a decade ago and will soon follow the western black rhino,
declared extinct in 2011.

Against all the
evidence, park ranger Mohammed Doyo — who looks after Sudan, Najin and Fatu —
clings to the forlorn hope that they will reproduce naturally. To deter poachers, the northern whites are
escorted by armed wardens at night and their horns are trimmed back to uneven
stumps. The horns are worth more than $65,000/kg on the Asian black market, and
are sought after by consumers who are falsely convinced that the ground-up
keratin — the substance that human fingernails and toenails are made of —
contains powerful medicinal properties.

The world's last
surviving male northern white rhino, ‘Sudan’ - stripped of his horn for his own
safety - is now under 24-hour armed guard in a desperate final bid to save the
species. Sudan is guarded day and night
by a group of rangers who risk their lives on a daily basis as they try to keep
the rhino from poachers lured by the rising price of ivory. But even without
his horn, keepers in the Kenyan reserve of Ol Pojeta fear his safety. The Ol Pejeta Conservancy is a 90,000-acre
not-for-profit wildlife conservancy in Central Kenya's Laikipia County. It is
situated on the equator west of Nanyuki, between the foothills of the Aberdares
and Mount Kenya.

The 43-year-old
rhino - who could live until his 50s - is the last chance for any future
northern white rhino calves. Sudan was moved, along with two female rhinos,
from a zoo in the Czech Republic in December 2009. The reserve, which
specialises in the conservation of rhinos, was chosen because of its successful
breeding programme with black rhinos.

Sheer
human greed ~and rhinos are not the only of its kind to be driven to such
desperation !!